she saw him coming and she said to him, very humbly, “Come in, my
lord.”

“Queen,” said Tristan, “why do you call me lord? Am I not your liege
and vassal, to revere and serve and cherish you as my lady and Queen?”

But Iseult answered, “No, you know that you are my lord and my master,
and I your slave. Ah, why did I not sharpen those wounds of the
wounded singer, or let die that dragon-slayer in the grasses of the
marsh? But then I did not know what now I know!”

“And what is it that you know, Iseult?”

She laid her arm upon Tristan’s shoulder, the light of her eyes was
drowned and her lips trembled.

“The love of you,” she said. Whereat he put his lips to hers.

But as they thus tasted their first joy, Brangien, that watched them,
stretched her arms and cried at their feet in tears:

“Stay and return if still you can … But oh! that path has no
returning. For already Love and his strength drag you on and now
henceforth forever never shall you know joy without pain again. The
wine possesses you, the draught your mother gave me, the draught the
King alone should have drunk with you: but that old Enemy has tricked
us, all us three; friend Tristan, Iseult my friend, for that bad ward
I kept take here my body and my life, for through me and in that cup
you have drunk not love alone, but love and death together.”